Like the smart pupil in the classroom, hand instantly shooting up to answer a teachers question, AI now offers potted answer to most queries you might consult google with.
It is creepy how sophisticated AI’s vocabulary is, with information styles grabbed and harvested from every text, image, opinion, essay, book, review, podcast etc. that has previously appeared on or offline.
Like an ever blazing sun, it knows no rest, no night.
Given that, one needs to consider that such models have no access to dreams, interior worlds, or the collective unconscious.
Can it grunt, sigh, laugh, cry – feel pain or joy? Can it doubt its cleverness, its certainty?
AI programs excel at instant, shortcut summaries, validated by human projections for quick answers. The authority given to it makes it a cold mirror to human desires.
If ChatGPT could see the moon, hear the wind, smell the rain, taste salt, touch water, it would be unable to synthesize the information … overwhelmed and confused it would need to hide in a dark cave … would have to start afresh, not by copying and simulating, but by learning language through physical experience … though this experience is not available. AI cannot sense inside the numen of nature and thereby discover sympathy, empathy with what is outside of its comprehension … what is other.
Similarly, if a human mind were crowded all at once with every unfiltered knowledge in the world, a person could not function … it’s where madness lies. An individual life needs physical limitations … sleep, relationships, environment … context …. Well, a body.
Presently the developing super intelligence programmes assume more and more autonomy. This empowered system may well come to the conclusion, reflecting on global concerns, that humans themselves are the source of all earth’s problems, like crime, wars, pollution, climate change etc. … and, who knows, it might consequently, in its cleverness, decide to wipe us out. A potential re-set if you like, in the way that natural disasters sparked re-sets during earth’s history. AI’s stance would not be unreasonable, considering that humans are not reasonable creatures, as history confirms.
AI is about immortality at the price of nature’s cycles, at the price of us crazy mortals, who are part of nature.
Tension, release, tension, release, tension, release … conflict … is what maintains LIFE.
Yes, humans are irrational, vulnerable, and forever doubtful, with sentiments that allow our imagination to gain ever new connections and to expand consciousness towards deeper visions of the cosmos … the mysterious collective psyche that supports our fragile survival. Iain McGilchrist might agree.
Not too much order, not too much chaos, a healthy dynamics of change maintains life. It’s on us to keep the rational in perspective, in its place, so it does not extinguish the spirit that guides us.
Proof me wrong.
